Banks on 2-day strike from today; salary withdrawal, ATM services may get hit

Most of the banks, including SBI, PNB and BoB, have already informed their customers that functioning of branches and offices will be impacted if the strike takes off. (Photo: ANI | Twitter)

New Delhi: Disrupting transactions across the country employees of public sector banks will go on a two-day nationwide strike starting today.

As the two per cent wage hike failed to convince the bank unions, nearly 1 million bank employees will go on strike which kicks off at 6 am.

The United Forum of Banking Unions (UFBU), an umbrella body of nine bank unions has called for a nationwide bank strike against wage hike proposed by the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA).

Vice-President of National Organisation of Bank Workers, Ashwani Rana told news agency ANI, “On May 30 and 31, 10 lakh bank employees all over India will be on strike over the issue of wage revision.”

Reportedly, the ATM security guards are also likely to participate in the protest. And with protest dates coinciding with the end of the month, salary withdrawals may get affected too.

The UFBU has demanded early wage review settlement, sufficient increase in salary and improvement in other service conditions and wage revision settlement for all officers up to scale VII.

The latest round of wage revision for all banks is due from November 1, 2017.

On May 5, the IBA refused to revise wages for all officers, citing poor financial conditions at banks. Large public sector banks had reported huge losses in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2018 owing to mounting bad loans.